jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

This happened a few months, ago, and it's back. I use SyncBack to backup to external drives. Those drives have always been named K, not my choice, but the computer's. Yesterday, the external became L, so Syncback couldn't do the backup.

If I make the drive letter change manually, that will mean going through over three dozen folders to change everything.

Since nothing else changed on the computer, as far as I know, why would the drive letters change?

EDIT: I found that if I have all the folders I'm backing up included in a SyncBack Group, changing only the Group letter will let me make the correction with just one move, rather than changing the letter of each folder.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

This can happen if you disconnect a drive and add another external drive, flash key etc. and then add the original ext. drive back. If you use drive management you can reset the Drive letter

ggttc Loc: TN

What he said.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I connect each of the three drives one after the other when I do a backup, and they have all been named K for months. Yesterday, they wanted to be called L. So I said, "Get the L out of there!" It's back to K till the drives get nasty again.

BHC Loc: Strawberry Valley, JF, USA

Jerry, if you are using Windows, you can assign (attach) letters to drives; once assigned, they will not change when you add or remove a drive.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I've had to do the "assigning" several times, since the letters keep changing from K to L. I think Dell sent me a computer with a nasty sense of humor.

tommyf Loc: Vero Beach, FL

Hope I understand but forgive me if I give you wrong info. I'm assuming that this external is a drive that you purchased, right? If so, then another post was correct in saying you need to name this drive manually when you insert it, for example, JERRYS BACKUP. Do this the next time you insert the drive but you may also need to re- name your folder when it appears. Not sure why this is necessary as the purpose of the external is for backup. Another suggestion, which I do, is to manually, Drag and Drop, your files. For me, this is full proof.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I just changed the name, and the letter is still K, from yesterday. So far, so good. I'll rename the other drives when I connect them.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Jerry, I ran into this problem years ago and found a wonderful solution (for Windows) here www.uew-sieber.de/english.html It is called USBDLM and runs as a service so it applies to everyone. It is freeware for personal use and can be installed on every computer you own to give consistent drive letter assignments. I have my photos on an external drive that I want every computer to recognize as P drive. The same applies to my external drive with music being assigned M drive. So no matter which computer I plug my photo drive into it is always listed as P drive.

You can also assign drive letter(s) for misc drives such as a drive from a friend. So you can assign letters like Q, R. S, and T to misc usb drives.

Read the instructions and you can easily create a script file, they supply a configurable template, that you can copy and paste to every one of your computers to keep it all consistent through out your network.

One caveat: if there is already a drive assigned with the required letter then it will not register and you will need to re-assign a letter to the offending drive. But this is a one time correction.

Enjoy. :)

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Thanks, Big Guy. That sounds good. I'll give it a try.

EDIT: Your link didn't work, but this one does.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Sorry bout the link. At least you got it. :thumbup:

tommyf Loc: Vero Beach, FL

Hey Jerry, my girlfriend, who in real life was an IT Director says that most likely you plugged your external into a different USB port than the one you originally used. Makes sense but once again, you can't go wrong with doing manual, old time Drag and Drop backups. Anyway, computers are weird, man. They just love making our lives crazy when we 're not looking (hee, hee).

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

You're right about computers being weird. I always use the same USB port to avoid problems - but it doesn't always help.